This is a cross post of a review I posted on my blog - I figured a lot of people would never find it there. I'm not a professional writer or reviewer and this is the first poker book I've ever reviewed (well, the first anything, in the strictest sense of the word).
I haven’t bought a poker book in 3 years so the mere fact that I ordered Elements of Poker speaks highly of the recommendations I had been given about it. I am here to add to that list of recommendations. I finished reading the book 12 hours after collecting it from my mail box. I didn’t set out to finish it that soon, and it’s a decent sized book — It’s just that easy to read, that enthralling, and that good.
There are passages and quotes that hit home hard and that will be read and re-read for the rest of my poker career. The book focuses on elements (144 to be exact) that Tommy has divided into several categories: Universal Elements, Table Poker, Internet Poker, Cash Games, Tournaments, Hold’em, Limit Hold’em, No-Limit Hold’em and Elements of Performance. As a primarily online pot-limit omaha cash game player you would think the book is largely useless to me. Not true. While a lot of the elements did not strictly apply to my branch of the poker tree there were certainly tidbits in each and every section that provided meaningful insight into my game. And I could tell that for someone who actually did have a vested interest in any of those said categories, the advice was very good.
Hell, the Universal Elements section alone is worth the book’s weight in gold. As I was reading the book I had in my mind that I would write a review, and give the book a score out of 5. After reading the Universal Elements chapter I was ready to give the book a 5. I don’t think I disagreed with anything in the book. The only reason that i’m knocking off a few points from a perfect 5 is that I wish the book went into more detail about a few points it makes. That’s not to say the book isn’t detailed – it is – it’s probably me being greedy and wanting the book to never end. I might have to shell out for some private coaching now (assuming he isn’t fully booked through 2035).
I don’t care if you have only been playing poker for a month or if you’ve been playing for 60 years. This book will help you. It will improve your winrate. A hundred thousand times over. It will save (and thus make) you more money than you can imagine. It will teach you everything you didn’t know you needed to know about poker, and life, and your poker life.
Elements of Poker isn’t about what hands to play, pot odds, reverse implied odds, check-raising the river or merging your range. It doesn’t preach poker theory and it won’t tell you how to play your hand. Everybody has an A game and everybody has a C game. This book is about closing the gap between the two (among other things). Imagine if your C game was only slightly worse than your A game. Just think about that for a minute. Imagine if you almost always played your A game and almost never your C game. Tommy doesn’t give you a 3 step guide to achieving this (nobody can do that) but he does give you the tools and knowledge required to get there on your own. I start working towards that today. When do you start?
